Fantastic French TV performance from 1968 with the classic Wyatt/Ratledge/Ayers lineup!

Soft Machine are an English experimental, psychedelic, progressive rock band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs. They were one of the central bands in the Canterbury scene. Though they achieved little commercial success, they are widely considered by critics to have been very influential in rock music,[1][2][3] with AllMusicdescribing them as "one of the more influential bands of their era, and certainly one of the most influential undergroundones."

Explore the long career of one of the most unique voices in rock

Robert Wyatt is a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist who has had a long career starting in the bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole and extending to an inventive and unique solo career that has proven to be quite influential for other musicians.

Part 1 of Adam Cutis' amazing 6-part series from 1992 looking at political and technocratic rationalism

Pandora's Box, subtitled A fable from the age of science, is a six-part 1992 BBC documentary television series written and produced by Adam Curtis, which examines the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism.

The episodes deal, in order, with communism in The Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah's leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s and the history of nuclear power.

Curtis' later series The Century of the Self and The Trap had similar themes. The title sequence made extensive use of clips from the short film Design for Dreaming, as well as other similar archive footage.

An amazing feat of animation from 1938, done with stop-motion animating technique, and set to the music of Franz Liszt

Oskar Fischinger (22 June 1900 — 31 January 1967) was a German-American abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter. He made over 50 short animated films, and painted c. 800 canvases, many of which are in museums, galleries and collections worldwide. Among his film works is Motion Painting No. 1 (1947), which is now listed on the National Film Registry of the U. S. Library of Congress.

A great deal of inaccurate information continues to be published about Fischinger, largely taken from decades-old sources, often repeated in online databases. While much new research has been achieved, and new information and materials are available, too many authors seem to continue to depend on some older material containing inaccuracies, e.g. William Moritz's Film Culture essay from the 1970s, and Optische Poesie, 1993.

Pillar of the Czech New Wave from the sadly-departed Jan Nemec

A Report on the Party and the Guests (Czech: O slavnosti a hostech, also known in English as The Party and the Guests) is a 1966 Czechoslovak drama film directed by Jan Němec. It was entered for the 1968 Cannes Film Festival,[1] but the festival was aborted owing to the events of May 1968 in France. The film was banned from 1966 to 1968 for being perceived as an allegory of totalitarian regimes. After a short release during the Prague Spring it was banned again for the next twenty years. In 1974 director Jan Němec was forced to leave the country.

Network Awesome - Mon, May 30 "I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest." -Robert Wyatt

◀ PREVNEXT ▶

THIS VIDEO:

MORE INFO ABOUT THIS SHOW »

May

30

What's On Today?

"I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest." -Robert Wyatt